Deep Memory · claim DEEP-C060 · Observation rung · Bird-men

The back of Hoa Hakananai'a carries two facing birdmen.

Not featured in the current editionAI-extractedorigin: split of DEEP-C041 (report 2026-09-09-inbox-deep-memory-200334)

source anchor

[§ Bird-men across the gallery]

“Two facing birdmen, a sooty tern between their beaks, komari, paddles, the ring and girdle.”

Evidence

Context· weakDEEP-E073

Pitts et al. abstract gives no manufacture date and does not itemise the tern, paddles, ring or girdle — part 2

what the source states: The abstract characterises the bas-relief carvings as "a single composition that narrates the island's birdman myth" without enumerating individual motifs.
what we infer: Absence from an abstract is not absence from the paper; these motifs and the date, if the study treats them, are in the unread body or in the British Museum record (Oc1869,1005.1), which was not reached. Zero diagnosticity toward the claims; recorded so that the gap is visible.
limitations: Negative evidence from an abstract only.

Mike Pitts (2014)AI-verified citation

Context· weakDEEP-E074

Pitts et al. abstract gives no manufacture date and does not itemise the tern, paddles, ring or girdle — part 3

what the source states: The abstract gives no absolute date for the statue, referring only relatively to the myth "as recorded in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries" and to events of 1868.
what we infer: Absence from an abstract is not absence from the paper; these motifs and the date, if the study treats them, are in the unread body or in the British Museum record (Oc1869,1005.1), which was not reached. Zero diagnosticity toward the claims; recorded so that the gap is visible.
limitations: Negative evidence from an abstract only.

Mike Pitts (2014)AI-verified citation

an honest empty state

This claim is in the ledger but not in the current edition's featured set. Nothing here has been assessed — that absence is information, not an oversight.

Still missing: plain-language gloss, credibility assessment, diagnosticity assessment, strongest objection, what would change our mind. A claim gains them when an edition features it and the edition's adopted assessment supplies the full treatment — a decision the panel reviews, not a field anyone flips.